In The Mirror

A dark story.

Day One — Morning

The reflection that stares back at me in the mirror has a black eye, which is odd, seeing as I can’t for the life of me remember banging it, and I feel no pain, even when I poke it with my finger. I did have a rough night last night, and by rough, I mean I may have drank a little too much, and by a little too much, I mean I probably came close to alcohol poisoning before blacking out, and who knows how much I drank after that. Did I drive home last night? A quick peek out my bathroom window reveals my car parked safely in the driveway. I probably didn’t drive. And if I did, it’s probably better that I don’t remember. Don’t need the idea that I’m a great drunk driver popping in my head the next time I’m plastered. Strangely enough, I’m not hungover. I feel great, which makes the black eye all the more puzzling. You’d think I’d at least have a little soreness. After poking at the fleshy purple blotch, I pull out some concealer from the cabinet; it was left behind by an ex, can’t remember her name, who absolutely needed me to look perfect every time I stepped out my front door like some airbrushed photoshop of a man. Naturally, she had to go. The concealer stayed. I bumped into her a couple months back, she must have gained fifty pounds. Or maybe she was pregnant. Who can tell? I dab the concealer on a little heavy, the powder caking over my eye bags. Whatever. It’s good enough. I smile at myself in the mirror, flashing my purple tinged teeth. Crap. Definitely had wine last night. Don’t remember the wine. I reach for my toothbrush. You’d think at my age I’d start brushing at least semi-regularly, but I’m still on an ‘as needed’ basis. Lucky for my teeth and gums, today it’s needed. I squeeze the last milli-something of toothpaste out of the tube. Should remember to pick up more on the way home. Though knowing me, I’d get as far as the pharmacy, get distracted by some trashy magazine covers and end up walking out with some waffles and a six-pack of beer. Focus is not my strong suit. I spit out the toothpaste. I know they say you should brush vigorously for at least thirty seconds or five minutes or some pre-defined amount of time, but today I give my choppers a quick surface once-over just to minimize the wine stains. I smile again. Less purple. Good. I fix the part in my hair, pop two multi-vitamins just in case the hangover kicks in a little later, and try to psych myself up for another day of getting bossed around by an apple that didn’t fall too far from his dumb-as-balls father tree. My job sucks.

Day One — Evening

Man, does my job suck. It’s eight pm and I’m just getting home. The bags under my eyes look worse. I think I might have a gray hair. Stress does that, they say. I pour my last finger of ten-dollar blended whiskey into the mouthwash cap, since I found my whiskey glass shattered in the bedroom. I know, I could just swig from the bottle, but I always figured drinking from the bottle was something a drunk did. I prefer to sip my bargain basement mind eraser with class. I down the whiskey, then go back to examining my one white hair. Still white. The black eye bruising has spread since this morning, the purple blood oozing out from under the concealer like the spilled syrup slowly creeping under the doorway crack in my kitchen. I should probably clean that up. I try to pour the last few drips from the whiskey bottle. All I get are fumes. I look at my watch. It’s going to be a long night. I try to decide if I’m up for a walk to the corner store.

Day Two — Morning

It was a long night. I finally gathered up the will to walk to the convenience store on the corner, and when I show up, it’s wrapped up in all that yellow police tape. A couple of cops are around asking questions. Doing blood spatter analysis. Stuff like that. Seems there was a robbery and Amir, the clerk with the dark brown snaggletooth, whipped out a shotgun and now the robber’s brain and the stacks of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey pints have what you might call a shared occupancy in the freezer. I asked Amir if I could just pick up a fifth of Jack, since I’m a pretty decent customer, but he told me to come back tomorrow. That sucked, but what can you do. He just blew a guys head off, so I sort of get where he’s coming from. There was a 24-hour grocery store about a mile away, but no way I was walking that far. Wasn’t feeling it. So, I came home, sparked a joint, and played video games. One of the really violent ones. But how many times can you vicariously beat up an old woman with a baseball bat before you realize that your life sucks. My number is probably in the low nineties. Hence the ‘it was a long night’. I wash off the old concealer. My face looks like it was attacked with a meat tenderizer. The left side of my face is bruised and battered, red and purple explosions along my cheekbones, and down my chin. I must have banged it a lot harder than I thought. I run my fingers along a particularly nasty section by my ear, and I feel nothing. I mean, I feel my finger running along my face by my ear, but I feel no pain at all. I wonder if I have that disease where you don’t feel any pain, so I take a dental pick that I once bought and never used aside from the occasional picking of dirt from under my toenails, and I prick myself in the face, perhaps a little harder than I should have. I conclude that I definitely do not have that disease where you don’t feel any pain. I reach for the concealer, and cake on a thick layer, the caked powder hiding just enough of my humanity, wrinkles and shit for me to look like some horrible victim of Botox gone wrong. I pull out a pair of sunglasses to complete the effect. Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go.

Day Two — Evening

I take off my sunglasses. It takes my eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the light. It’s been a while since I wore sunglasses all day, but then, it’s also been a while since I’ve had a shiner the size of a personal pizza. I check out the damage in the mirror. My left eye is really swelling up now. My nose is black and blue. Must have been some fight, if bruises are still popping up days later. I’d hate to see the other guy. Actually, I’d love to see the other guy. It would make me feel a whole lot better knowing the other guy got it at least as bad as me. A trickle of blood drips from my nostril. I look around for a tissue, but I’m out so I grab a hand-towel off the floor that I’ve been using to mop up the leak from my toilet tank and dab at my nose. I look at the towel, there’s no blood on it. Weird. But then, I’ve seen weirder things. I feel under my nose. No wetness. No blood. I toss the towel back on the floor. I should really talk to the landlord about that leaky toilet tank. I should have talked to him three months ago when the leak started, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, right? I’ll probably talk to him tomorrow. I’m not feeling it right now. What I am feeling is a shower. I unbutton my wrinkled designer shirt and wonder when the last time I got it cleaned was. A week? A month? Time flies when you’re having fun, right? Pulling off the shirt, I notice a large bruise in that place where my pectorals meet my shoulder, like somebody took a crowbar to my chest. You would think I definitely would have felt that, but, again, nothing. My reflection is starting to look like a meat puppet, so I try to turn my head to look at the bruise in person, but my neck is not nearly as flexible as it one was. Blame it on one too many nights sleeping on a low-end Ikea love seat, the one they sell for like a hundred bucks, and comes in a big flat box with ‘some assembly required’. I somehow manage to get a look at my shoulder in my peripheral vision, and here’s where things get a little wonky. I haven’t smoked anything in hours, and I only had like a fifth of Jameson on the way home for work, so I know I wasn’t seeing things, but there was no bruise on my shoulder. I run my fingers over my chest, over my shoulder, over the random bald patch just over my left nipple, but nothing feels out of ordinary. Everything seems to be in the right place, every bit of muscle definition, or lack thereof, seems perfectly normal. My brain and my eyes are telling me that I’m not hurt at all, but my reflection says otherwise. I wonder if I’m schizophrenic, not that I actually know what schizophrenia is, at least not in a clinical sense. I know the Hollywood version, where people implant chips in your molars or where you have an imaginary best friend who you don’t find out is imaginary until the third act, but do I know what schizophrenia really is? Do I really care? Probably not. I double-check the bruising in the mirror. It’s still there. Mirror me looking a lot worse than actual me. I should probably sleep this off. I’ll just have a couple shots first. I grab the mouthwash cap, since I forgot to pick up a new shot-glass.

Day Three — Morning

Skull is throbbing. Should not have had those last few shots. Slept half on the love seat, half on the floor. My neck is stiff. Stiff-er, I should say. Forget about turning my head more that five or ten degrees, it’s just not going to happen. I peer in the mirror. My face looks even worse. My left eye swollen shut, and in the bruising on my jaw I swear I can make out the dimples where each individual knuckle connected with bone. Maybe. Is that a sixth knuckle? I peel off my T, revealing what looks like a Jackson Pollock painting of bruises and scars across my chest. I look down at my chest, my real, non-reflected chest. Not a single bruise. Well, there’s one, just below my ribcage, but I’m pretty sure that’s from that time, a couple days ago, when the loan shark enforcer sucker-punched me. He thought I was somebody else. Funny story. My eyes dart back and forth from my beat up self in the mirror, to my immaculate self (all things considered), not being reflected. I’m not one of those people that use the term ‘surreal experience’ every time a homeless person vomits on my shoes, but this…this I would definitely classify as surreal. I wave my hand. My reflection mirrors me perfectly. Only, something is different. Scrawled across the reflection’s palm are three words. And not in some backwards reflection REDRUM kind of way. Three words, perfectly legible even through my raging alcohol induced dehydration.

Across his palm, three words.

PLEASE HELP ME.

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